Kerby Anderson

How many Americans attend church on a regular basis? The typical percentage usually cited is 22 percent. In other words, one in five people are sitting in a pew every Sunday.

We have known that percentage is wrong. Decades ago, Gallup took the time to add up church attendance in towns and compared that to the population of the town. They knew the percentage was inflated.

Carey Nieuwhof has been looking at church trends for years and has been on my radio program. He has a new video out that documents what we already know. Researchers at the University of Chicago were able to get access to cell phone location data for two million Americans. They tracked the GPS pings for nearly a year and mapped every visit to a church.

They concluded that the 22 percentage is vastly inflated. The more accurate percentage is around 5 percent. As Carey says, “this is not a rounding error.” People aren’t telling us the truth.

What’s going on? This is what researchers call a social desirability bias. We tell pollsters (and even ourselves) that we are doing desirable things. We tend to overestimate the number of times we go to the gym. We underestimate the number of times we go to a liquor store.

It is true that much higher percentages of people go to church on Easter and Christmas. That’s an event, not a rhythm. They also found that fewer people attend church if it rains, meaning that many Americans are fair-weather Christians.

I raise this issue for two reasons. First, we have been using inflated percentages of church attendance and Christian influence. Second, it is a reminder we need to work much harder to get people into church.